


Can men fly?

by tawktomahawk



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode AU: s08e03 The Long Night, F/M, The Long Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 08:46:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19720243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawktomahawk/pseuds/tawktomahawk
Summary: The world answers no questions with words. Jaime knows Brienne is the only answer he will receive.An ode to Jaime and Brienne in The Long Night. Short oneshot, inspired by quotes from “The Angel Gibreel,” chapter 1 of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.





	Can men fly?

**Author's Note:**

> To our beauty and beast.

_"With death comes honesty, my beloved, so I can call you by your true names."_

**TO DIE**

Lady Brienne, Jaime muses, not for the first time. Of course, she is Ser Brienne now, made so by the steel of his own sword trembling in his left hand. And it is right that his right hand had not performed that act, sullied as it was with years of dishonor and incestuous desire.

Despite the change in Brienne’s title, he notes no transformation. Knighthood is not new to her, and Jaime knows without doubt that the title will rest naturally on her shoulders—no, in her shoulders, knighthood suffusing every inch of her body and finding itself already there—filling every vein, pulling taught every tendon, strengthening every muscle. Brienne has long been a Knight.

Lady Brienne, he thinks again. Perhaps “Lady” is the title of which his left hand should remind her in their remaining hours. He wants to make her feel like a Lady, to know womanhood as she knows her knightliness: every vein, every tendon, every muscle. He wants to feel what his right hand had not, to incite a desire that could flourish as it pleased, constrained only by insecurity and not by the shame of their coupling.

And oh, how he desires Brienne. _Eyesnosemouthteetharmslegschestscars_. Beautiful in their entirety once the entirety of her soul revealed itself behind them. A moon peeking from clouds.

He shows her that he felt thus. Later, in her quarters, a pallet beneath their backs, a fire warming his side, he shows her. His left hand on her shoulder—in the name of the Seven, I charge you. His stump on her waist—in the name of the Seven, I love you. He takes her, but only because she lets him. They are Knights in the Night, a Lady and her lover.

A horn sounds in the distance. Anticipated yet unwelcome all the same.

"Jaime," she breathes out.

"My beloved Brienne," he ghosts against the scarred juncture of neck and throat. "My dearest Commander. I will follow you gladly to any end. Even one as bleak as this."

They dress. They walk. They ready.

To die, Jaime muses. The finality of it frightens him some. But then, he had died before—Kingslayer, Lannister with the golden hand. And he had been reborn again, fewer pieces and a greater whole.

What was one more death?

**TO FLY**

They stay together. There are many things Jaime would ask for in these moments, when the Dothraki raise their flaming arakhs as if the sun had shattered and left its pieces to conquer the Night. Had the opportunity presented itself, Jaime might have asked for himself and Brienne to be somewhere else. To be in Essos, perhaps, with the grit of the sand in their shoes. To be anywhere but here, any time but now.

They are not in Essos, and they are not in any time or place but this one, where the dead come nearer with each breath. But they are together, all the same. It is the most essential part of all he would have asked for.

The seam where sky meets snow is churning with bodies, and the flood of the dead extinguishes Dothraki flames like water. Jaime knows what the Dothraki are capable of, and he just witnessed their end. He is not so presumptuous as to assume that his will be any different. The wights approach in a wave.

Jaime turns with varying intentions to share a look with Brienne. His first intention is merely to share a look of horror, for the dead are nearly upon them. His second intention, however, is to look upon Brienne for the last time. He will see her fight, see her yell, see her move yet, but Jaime knows he will likely never again look upon her without the distractions movement brings.

There is a still moment, between the dead’s arrival and the turn of Jaime’s head, in which he attempts the futile task of committing Brienne to memory. Her face is horrified and yet no more or less unpretty than it ever is. Her body is tall and strong and spectacular. Her eyes are the most astonishing he’s ever seen. She is a being to behold, and she is everything. Should every living being but her die on this Night, the very best of humanity would still have survived.

He looks away. He hears her, distantly, although she is right there. "Stand your ground," she says to her unit and to him.

Where else is there to go? The end is the end is the end, and there is no running from it.

Death has already arrived.

**TO SING**

They are pressed against a wall when it ends. Jaime does not believe it, but he slumps in relief at the possibility of a reprieve. He shudders in a breath as wipes his bloodied left hand against his leg to improve his grip before the dead return.

Those still alive begin to murmur. Their voices catch on the wind and carry hope to those in its path.

Dead. Gone. Over. Alive. Jaime hears them, but in battle, to trust in hope is to submit to your enemy, and Jaime refuses to yield to this enemy, this Night, these corpses animated by Death.

"Jaime, it's over." Her voice pierces through the hopeful haze of other living men, and he turns.

She is there, solid and still, the way he had thought she never would be again. He raises his left hand against her cheek, suddenly infused with the need to tell her—why had he never told her?

"I love you," he says aloud, the words raw in his throat, as if they were the first time he’d uttered them to anyone. Of course, the words are a last of sorts as well. Who else would he—could he—say them to? In a world where the dead stay dead, naturally his living heart would beat for her.

The blush in her cheek appears beneath the clotted red of the dead’s decayed viscera. Its innocent uncontaminated pink is a declaration: I live.

"As I love you."

Something in Jaime disintegrates. Some small parasitical innard feeding off of shame and guilt and hatred. He doesn’t know where the disintegrated dust lands. He can no longer feel it. Redemption settles weightlessly on his frame, from hair to hand, feet to forearm. It no longer feels like the bestowal of a gift demanding retroactive proof of his worthiness. He does not fear that Brienne will demand it back.

How does it happen, that proximity to death should strip life of its most painful complications? That the possibility of _the_ end should reveal itself as only _an_ end, like the blockage of a vein simply redirecting blood’s flow elsewhere? That dawn should break on the Long Night to a day more breathtaking than Jaime had ever seen? That Jaime should live and love?

The world answers no questions with words. He knows Brienne is the only answer he will receive.

Jaime kisses her, just a touch of bloodied lips, and tastes forgiveness there. He forgets to ask whether he deserves it.

_"We are creatures of air, Our roots in dreams And clouds, reborn In flight. Goodbye."_

**Author's Note:**

> The title and italicized quotations bracketing this piece are from "The Angel Gibreel," chapter 1 of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. They can be found on pages 7, 9, and 13 of the 2008 Random House Trade Paperback Edition.


End file.
